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2017 Goals: Did I fail?

To sum, if you don’t like clicking links, half way through the year I was doing pretty good but there were a few goals that were not going as planned.

1. Continue on with this Book Blogging thing

I had another slump, and I really need to re-think my blog. More like redesign and put more effort in. Anyway, I’m still kinda here so this still kinda counts as a win.

2. Clear out my drafts file

Didn’t happen. But honestly, have a few handfuls of half-ideas or half- written posts is not a bad thing, despite what early 2017 me thought.

3. Keep the number of books on my Goodreads ‘To-read’ list under the number of books in my ‘Read’ list

This mess of a goal is a) a mess and b) still kinda worked out in the end. I would still like my list to be smaller than it is, but I’ve had a good reading year where I took a number off the list and added about as many as I read.

4. Make better reviews

I did not achieve this goal. Sure, it’s open-ended so I could find some way that I did manage it (and my brain is already supplying a few for me) but the reality is I think my reviews got worse not better. Rereading my review for The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet really brings this point home as the review I would have written for it now would not have been as good.

5. Reduce the number of unread books on my bookshelf by half (of the total number I started the year with; aka have 6 or fewer unread books by year end)

There is a saga with this goal, and I will do a check-in eventually for this but overall I didn’t achieve this goal, but still consider it a success because I did read a lot of books that have been sitting on my shelf for years.

6. A tough one: Stop feeling so guilty about not reading. Conversely, stop feeling so guilty about reading.

As I explained in my check-in, this one ended up not being tough and fixed itself quite nicely. As a result I both read and didn’t read this year and I felt great about both!

In the Check-inI also talked about my a few side goals and trends I was hitting. My Goodreads goal I ended up actually committing to more then the first half of the year and upping the ante to 75 books, which I achieved. I also continued to read diverse types of books (generas and formats). Since I wasn’t doing as many reviews in the end of 2017 my emphasis on audiobooks reduced but I always acknowledged reading them in my round-ups. Finally, my commitment to indy and self-published books waned in the last half of the year, but I might try for it again in 2018.

Final comments:I did feel I read a bunch of forgettable books this year, even though on average my star ratings were quite high. I need to think on this and determine if I want to address it in my 2018 goals.

Whoops! But at least you have a lot of options! I found part of why I didn’t achieve goal 5 was because most of my unread books are uninspiring at this point but hold enough interest that I don’t want to donate the book.